"That was very brutal, I think," said Dorothea

"Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist

preacher, you know. And Johnson said, 'You may judge what a

_hypocrite_ he is.' And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very

little like 'the highest style of man'--as somebody calls the

Christian--Young, the poet Young, I think--you know Young? Well, now,

Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord

had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it

down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was--I

assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of

it--or Scott, now--Scott might have worked it up. But really, when I

came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have

a bit of hare to say grace over. It's all a matter of

prejudice--prejudice with the law on its side, you know--about the

stick and the gaiters, and so on. However, it doesn't do to reason

about things; and law is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I

hushed the matter up. I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more

severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the

county. But here we are at Dagley's."

Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on. It is

wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we

are blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass are apt to

change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on

their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing

how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never

complain or have nobody to complain for them. Dagley's homestead never

before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did today, with his mind

thus sore about the fault-finding of the "Trumpet," echoed by Sir James.

It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine

arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been

delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had

dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked

with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and

half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which

the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall

with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled

subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on

interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen

door. The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors,

the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished

unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the

scanty dairy of cows being tethered for milking and leaving one half of

the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to

wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from

feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,--all these objects under

the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a

sort of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit,"

touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the

depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming

capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time. But these

troublesome associations were just now strongly present to Mr. Brooke,

and spoiled the scene for him. Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the

landscape, carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat--a very old

beaver flattened in front. His coat and breeches were the best he had,

and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he

had not been to market and returned later than usual, having given

himself the rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull.

How he came to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of

wonderment to himself on the morrow; but before dinner something in the

state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips

were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on

the walls, had seemed to warrant a little recklessness. It was a maxim

about Middlemarch, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should

have good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale

well followed up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in

them that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley seem merry:

they only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual. He had also

taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant

dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in

holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.

He was flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he

stood still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached with

his easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other

swinging round a thin walking-stick.




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